Trade talks with India 'coming along great', says Donald Trump

Donald Trump. Pic/AP

US President Donald Trump said that trade talks with India were "coming along great" and expressed confidence in signing a deal. Unlike his aides, however, the president did not put an immediacy to the talks. "India's coming along great," he told reporters at an airport, heading to a rally in Michigan state to mark his achievements in the first 100 days of his second term. "I think we'll have a deal with India... they want to make a deal."

Scott Bessent, the treasury secretary who has been leading the negotiations with trading partner countries in Asia, has flagged the likelihood of a deal with India being the first to be signed in the aftermath of the global trade turmoil triggered by President Trump's multiple rounds of escalation of tariff, including a reciprocal tariff on nearly all of America's trading partner countries.

Imports from India were pegged at 26 per cent in President Trump's reciprocal levies that were announced early this month aimed at levelling import duties and also bridging the trade imbalance that favours India. It is down to 10 per cent for 90 days and applies to all trading partner nations with the exception of China, whose exports to the US will be tariffed at 145 per cent.

India has been off the block fast to sew up a trade deal and the Trump administration has been touting it as the model outcome of President Trump's tariff assault on global trade. "I would guess that India would be one of the first trade deals we would sign," Treasury Secretary Bessent told CNBC. Bessent has indicated the first trade deal is expected this week or the next.

India wants a deal and made it clear by not retaliating to President Trump's reciprocal tariffs, unlike China, and moved swiftly to seek a deal instead. Few details are available of the deal, but there are expectations in the US of major cuts in duties on imported automobiles, a long-standing US demand.

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